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I went back and played 1 and 2 after 3. At first Witcher 1 felt very clunky (particularly the combat for me) but I stuck with it and ended up loving it. Focusing on the group sword style made everything a lot easier, it's basically all I used after a certain point. I preferred 1 to 2 though both were thoroughly worthwhile.

The alchemy system in 1 is the most amazing implementation of alchemy in a game that I have ever encountered. It was worth it for that alone. In comparison, the alchemy in 2 and 3 was a step back imho.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Carabosse

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I always found W3 to be very intriguing even though I've never played any of the games. The cinematic scenes in W3 and voice acting are just spot on. Far superior than Fallout 4 and Skyrim by a long shot. It's just a shame that it's limited to playing just as Geralt. However, I don't think playing a fixed character makes it a bad game like others think. Or like others think not a RPG or a great RPG. I think it's a matter of choice and in this case, I think it works really good for the Witcher series. I know because I've watched a lot of gameplay on W3. I was almost dedicated to watching someone who did parts of videos recording the whole game from start to finish. I wish they would expand a bit more on allowing you to play as other characters though. And it would be really nice if the toolkit was par with the Creation Kit. I would so jump on the bandwagon in a heart beat. But unfortunately I don't think my potatoe PC can handle W3 all that great. And my budget is very limited. I have priorities over PC upgrades, community supporting and buying games atm so it's not easy.

At some point I plan to buy it, but I would get it from GOG. Not through Steam, ever.

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I am also not concerned by playing a single character without any customization. So long as the developers do their job and create a fantastic world and game play.

I am not concerned that they have a tool kit or that it isn't "on par" with the CK. They appear to have done their homework, created a game that works well and plays well with great story so if they are a bit short on the modding option... I believe that is there right. Bethesda on the other hand advertises the availability of modding their game and claim you can do a lot. (which you can do more than most other games) which is great. however it is on an seriously aging engine, with a story that is weak with many issues with the engine / game play. If they recreated the engine, made the tools that are currently having to be built (reversed engineered) by the community. Basically a solid modding environment with what is necessary to make all the changes desired ... they too would be doing their job. Even if the story was weak or strange or otherwise not appreciated by the users they would have what in my opinion Bethesda is selling, a modding game. Then the engine and modding would work who cares about the game play. They introduce some interesting characters and situations etc... the community would take it from there.

When I get around to it I will be playing some of the Witcher game. So far it looks kind of like Assassans Creed.

edit...

It is also on Steam for the same price except on Steam you can get the rest of the Witcher games as well.

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As much as I enjoyed the Witcher games and I did they are amazing games, for me personally they don't hold a candle to the Bethesda games. In Skyrim and the Creation Kit I have spent over 1000 hours, fast approaching this in Fallout 4 and the equivalent kit. That is an incredible measure of euros spent/time. I'm not using all of this time only to fix the game or attempt to apply other peoples mods to fix it. I assure you I'm spending all of that time because I find enjoyment in it. There is something that Bethesda do that fundamentally allow me to connect to the character I'm playing, something I don't experience in other games (yes, even in Fallout 4 with the dialogue system changes).

Basically I spent a couple of hundred hours playing through the Witcher games and had my fill (this is good value for money). After a thousand hours and more I still look forward to playing Skyrim and Fallout.

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As much as I enjoyed the Witcher games and I did they are amazing games, for me personally they don't hold a candle to the Bethesda games. In Skyrim and the Creation Kit I have spent over 1000 hours, fast approaching this in Fallout 4 and the equivalent kit. That is an incredible measure of euros spent/time. I'm not using all of this time only to fix the game or attempt to apply other peoples mods to fix it. I assure you I'm spending all of that time because I find enjoyment in it. There is something that Bethesda do that fundamentally allow me to connect to the character I'm playing, something I don't experience in other games (yes, even in Fallout 4 with the dialogue system changes).

Basically I spent a couple of hundred hours playing through the Witcher games and had my fill (this is good value for money). After a thousand hours and more I still look forward to playing Skyrim and Fallout.

Question...

Would you have played Fallout or Skyrim etc as long if you didn't have the modding ability? To be able to change things so much that it is almost not the same game anymore?

See Witcher games is different. Like Mass Effect (which I have spent countless hours on and have gone back to time and time again to play it when I get board of other games.) These games have limited modablity or alter ability. Comparing the games with Fallout, Skyrim when discussing community mods isn't fair. Bethesda didn't create those mods the modding community did. It is more fair to rate the game as it was released. I personally wouldn't have even completed Fallout 4 more than once under one faction without the ability to change and more importantly correct shortcomings with what Bethesda produced.

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'Bethesda games are better because you can mod them' is a straw man. Witcher 3 doesn't need mods. Bethesda shit on the other hand has little replay value without a community of modders supporting it. And Witcher 3 beats the shit out of anything Bethesda can make as far as story writing and voice acting goes.

I have 1000+ hours in on Witcher 3 and I still haven't seen everything and done everything. Imagine 1000+ hours on an unmodded Bethesda release. With that amount of time you've memorized every inch of the postage stamp sized map and played every quest available multiple times.

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It's impossible to put 1k+ hours into a Beth game without running into instability. And not just minimal things. Their final patch and all the official patches they make will eventually fix some things, but they end up breaking something else and in the end they leave it like that and it falls down to the unofficial patch team to do their dirty work. So as bland as their games may be, even if you could live through playing the whole game from start to finish, you have to deal with instability and broken quests that never start or finish for that matter. So to play a vanilla Beth game is suicidal. Without a doubt from my personal experience, and the experience of many others, their games cannot be 100% satisfactory without mods in a vanilla game play because there's too many bugs and more than a handful of them will not let you complete certain quests or even trigger quests or even let you complete the game.

I don't know how their console games are. I can't imagining going through the same experience without having to rely on mods to fix the game.

Edited September 11, 2016 by Guestdirty edits

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I wasn't trying to make the point that Bethesda games are better because you can mod them. I was just being clear that it was a part of it. Because I know that if I had just stated that I've spent over 1000 hours the first reply would probably have been "only because of modding".

What's with everyone throwing around accusations of straw man arguments, you see it in so many online discussions these days. It's almost like the children learned a new word which they think makes them sound clever.

Just to point out that if you really have played over 1000 hours in Witcher 3 then you beat the completion average on howlongtobeat by over 800 hours, from a selection of 262 polled. I'm not saying you haven't but it would appear to make you a significant outlier.

To answer if I could play a Bethesda game for over 1000 hours unmodded with the substantial content that they offer. I have no idea, I've never tried.

Anyway this seems a little too much like the other place where having an opinion that goes against the collective leads to everyone piling on to stifle that opinion. I just want to enjoy making mods, so I'll leave it there.

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I wasn't trying to make the point that Bethesda games are better because you can mod them. I was just being clear that it was a part of it. Because I know that if I had just stated that I've spent over 1000 hours the first reply would probably have been "only because of modding".

What's with everyone throwing around accusations of straw man arguments, you see it in so many online discussions these days. It's almost like the children learned a new word which they think makes them sound clever.

Just to point out that if you really have played over 1000 hours in Witcher 3 then you beat the completion average on howlongtobeat by over 800 hours, from a selection of 262 polled. I'm not saying you haven't but it would appear to make you a significant outlier.

To answer if I could play a Bethesda game for over 1000 hours unmodded with the substantial content that they offer. I have no idea, I've never tried.

Anyway this seems a little too much like the other place where having an opinion that goes against the collective leads to everyone piling on to stifle that opinion. I just want to enjoy making mods, so I'll leave it there.

You have every right to your opinion just like everybody else here. Don't worry about others opinions Or how many of them are posted

(You even answered the question to how long you'd play without an unmodded game Double points lol. )

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I've played through Wicher3 twice taking different paths and romancing both Yennifer and Triss. I've played Geralt as a dick and him as a nice guy. I used both of those play-throughs to do Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine. It's pretty safe to say I've seen a lot and done a lot in the game. Now I'm starting a new game so I can use a new Geralt to complete the whole thing, start to finish. No Bethesda game can hold my interest like that without mods.

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That us something like what I do with Mass Effect. I played it so many different ways I forget the ways I played it :P. Now I have all the DLCs and such for II and III so I can go back in and play all those over again and experience the added DLCs.

Witcher looks like a very big game. I would assume if you played the different parts may different ways (It is a RPG after all) then you can possibly achieve 1000 hours or more.

Now for the mods in Fallout 3, NV how much have you played those games with mods? Skyrim? I think that is what @Carabosse was trying to state made the game great for him/her. Not the actual game itself.

I would like it if the tools were better and easier to create for Fallout 4 so that modders can get in and make Fallout 4 much like Fallout 3 and NV. I would also like to see the base story much more developed and refined like Witcher as well so that mods wouldnt be necessary as it is currently at least for me to play the game. For the record I went through the Institue quest to the end and stopped playing for months until some of the basic fixes (place in red) etc was created and stable enough to be used. It wasn't until after the CK was released and futher fixes were made before I went back to Fallout 4.

The above has my load order. Most aren't even needed. However some are essential. Loosing a Fusion Core for 1 jump... really? Also the ammo is in short supply... you could craft ammo in FAllout NV why not here.? Power lines so f*****g short that you have to have poles so frequent it is hard to navigate the settlement? WTF.. Seriously. At least it should be more "realistic' and be able to be spaced like they are in the real world. You can't do that unless you go through and wire the entire house.. seriously? Spend 1 hour wiring the entire house to have power in the front of the house when power connected in the back? So as you can see other than the cheats mostly a few minor issues that are being fixed by mods. Stuff that really could have been improved on when Bethesda seen that it was poorly received.

Armors not being able to be combined when making sense. Like some of the clothing. Can't place a shoulder pad over a dress/ shirt?

These are some of the fit and finish things that are annoying and require fixes in the form of mods.

Those that dis Fallout 4 or Bethesda games see them getting weaker on the RPG aspect, having more bugs than before, less fixes by them and now the main reason most love the game... modding.. having less options due to their changes to the engine and using proprietary tools (Havoc) instead of assisting the modding community by helping to provide modding tools beyond the CK. In my option if Bethesda built on the modding tools and aspect providing easier access to or actual tools to work on the game without modders having to reverse engineer the game files (FNIS for example) then we could say they are doing their job.

I don't see them doing any part of the game process well from modding aspect to the fit and finish of the game or even the RPG element. I can work for the Brotherhood and the Railroad constantly until some of the very last quest without even a single comment or action from either party. Not even a warning. Is that realistic? Is that really RPG? I should at least get some comments on my assisting what is essentially two different groups with totally different philosophies.

The older games I believe actually created by Bethesda (correct me if I am wrong) actually had penalties for working with another group. (Morrowwind) So it isn't like they don't understand the concept. The fans from that era are upset with the watered down aspect of RPGs that they are making now. The appearance at least to some that they are just slapping together whatever is popular currently for the goal of mass sale. I don't personally begrudge them making money.. In fact I would happily send them money for all their assets going forward if there was better structure and more focus on their RPG elements in an advertised game that is historically RPG game. Most fans of this game would... ;). Some that might say it cost money to create such a game... well many indie games do it for far less and many times far better quality. Money spent on project isn't going to = excellent.. one has to focus that to where it is needed. Game wise I would have preferred a much more limited game with better more developed story line and RPG elements with the possibility of more tighter development and modding tools.

Now I am not going to bash the game entirely. I have been playing it for over 200 hours though many quest and the DLCs (not the add on packs actual DLCs with new worlds etc Far Harbor and Nuka World) and there are some gems in the game but way less than those found in Oblivion, fallout 3 and yes even Fallout NV. Far Harbor wasn't bad (not like OLB bad, or Point Look out) but it wasn't as good as it could be but acceptable. Nuka World looks like they cut half the game away. It is Raider centric.. when there is no real Raider options in the main game... (the main game pushes you to be good for the most part) and if you get rid of them ... the entire experience is so very empty. Even the radio which was enjoyable for a time (too small needed much more content) was removed .. (however that does make sense) with nothing to replace it with.

I really wanted this game to be great ... however it wasn't. I remember playing Fallout NV for hours upon hours without a single mod when it was released. I had it the first day.

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Say one thing about Bethesda games, people like to talk about them.. But back on topic.

The things I like about the Witcher games. The atmosphere of the world, the dark fairytale style is something I've always loved. I like that there are shades of grey in decisions instead of just a binary good and bad. And that there is so much nastiness in the world, not that I'm a nasty person but it really adds to the overall feel.

The alchemy, especially in the first game. Having to acquire books so that you could learn how to harvest components from plants and animals, the categories of base components that could be combined differently for varying effects. And the sheer variety in the crafting of alchemical items.

I've often thought about trying to emulate parts of it in Skyrim, though perhaps with less semen. (Oh god, now I'm doing it)

What I don't like. Geralt! Not entirely true. But things like the way he speaks to Roach. They make me want to punch him.

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I had a laugh at how the cat responds to you at the Inn when you start.. lol.. even the cat has it out for you..

Anyway the story makes sense so far and I can't fault the logic of the game and how things work so far. very well thought out.

Now about the horse. Have you had a horse? The next statement might sound wrong but you sometimes have to swat it or such (not to cause hurt etc but to gets its attention) A horse that is strong willed (most used for situations like this in the old Calvary etc) can think on its own once it understands what you need etc. many times has to be occasionally show who is the "lead" or herd leader. He (or she) will occasionally try to push you. Showing some strength and such along with a bit of kindness etc helps keep them / it in compliance. Roach isn't some standard wagon puller. He / she (not sure ) is a battle horse which would mean a pretty dominate spirit.

Now I haven't seen much of the game yet but so far it doesn't seem too bad. Also consider how it would have been treated back in the 1200's (I assume similar time frame to our history just with magic stories etc) A whole lot worse treatment would have occurred to most horses. I haven't seen him actually mistreat the horse. In fact... lol if you are stupid it seems and start to get him hurt by fighting on saddle .. he dumps your sorry ass and runs a bit away.. lol

However I do find it strange that he would call his horse Roach.. does anybody know why he does this?

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You don't need the 'required' specs to play Witcher 3. If you can run Skryim you can run Witcher3 as long as you have the 64bit OS and at least 6gb ram.

Horses...

I've been around plug horses my entire life. I hate them. Mean, deceptive, cruel to one another. There one thing to know about horses; if you get on one you had better be prepared to kill it, because they are prepared to push the limit on you if they see one instance of you being unsure or God Forbid afraid. Horses aren't pets, in the same way a police dog isn't a pet.

No idea why Geralt calls his horse Roach. But it's an apt term though.

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The things I like about the Witcher games. The atmosphere of the world, the dark fairytale style is something I've always loved. I like that there are shades of grey in decisions instead of just a binary good and bad. And that there is so much nastiness in the world, not that I'm a nasty person but it really adds to the overall feel.

I have to say with about 4 hours into the game I can agree the environment and just the feel is more deep and broad than most games. Many shades of grey.

There are a lot of reasons I love Witcher3, but I guess the biggest part for me is being treated like an adult when I play. The human aspect of the game is very plausible and it might be 'too real' for sensitive types. Gritty medieval reality with magic and monsters thrown in.

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What do they think "I'll get medieval on your ass" means? Do they think you will be giving them flowers of all things...

The game is quite tame compared to what actually would / could happen during the 12th century.

Spoiler

5.Impalement

Impalement on a pole was one of the most gruesome methods of execution, often used during the Middle Ages. Criminal was be forced to sit on a thick, sharpened wooden pole. The pole was then slowly raised upright and the criminal was left to gradually slide further down the pole only by his or her own weight. The pole then emerged through victim’s chest, shoulder or neck. Sometimes, it could take more than three days for a person to finally die, in slow and painful way.

Woodcut depicting vertical impalement(Bordeaux, 1593)

Impalement was especially prevalent in 15.th century Romania, during the reign of Vlad Dracula, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler. He reportedly executed more than 80,000 people this way, and often enjoyed having a meal while watching them die.

In an East Asian variant of this execution method, victim was securely tied in place above a young bamboo shoot.Over the course of several days, the sharp, rapidly growing bamboo shoot would puncture and completely penetrate the victim’s body, eventually emerging throughthe other side. This method of execution was allegedly practiced in 19.th century China and Malaysia, and even during the WWII by Japanese soldiers.

Spoiler

Flaying

Skinning alive, also known as flaying, was one of the most gruesome execution methods ever conceived, especially prevalent during the classical antiquity. It was used mostly on captured soldiers and dangerous criminals.

Flaying of a corrupt judge(Italy, 1657)

The Aztecs of Mexico often flayed their war prisoners during ritual human sacrifices. There are also many indications of ancient Assyrians flaying the defeated rulers of their enemies and nailing their skin to the city walls, as a warning to all potential rebels.

In most used method of flaying, person’s hands were tied above his or her head, while the executioner gradually cut off all the skin using a very knife, starting at the face. Often, attempts were made to keep the skin intact. Another method involved severely burning the victim, and then gradually peeling his or her skin off.

In the year 415, Hypatia of Alexandria, famous female mathematician and philosopher, was allegedly flayed alive by a enraged Christian mob, using sharp oyster shells.

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"15 lashes with the knout. Make it so." That's a direct quote from the game, and then they actually do it. Hanging, burning at the stake, impaling, all of that vile shit is in the game too. Sometimes it's hard to watch without feeling outrage at the NPCs responsible, and they are just pixelated villains. That's how evoking the game is, to me at least. I've never been madder at NPCs in game than I have in Witcher3.

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There is even a mention by the Red Barron that if he found those responsible for his missing wife and daughter he will "flay them alive".

I have had some fun with the puglist quest that Witcher has.. lol. Like really.. a person trained in killing monsters for a profession couldn't toss a few punches? Anway... I have done this when I was on level 16 and the suggested level is like 10 or 11 so yes.. I mopped them up very fast. The last one was so fast I doubt I put more than two punches (might be due to the previous match... not giving info out for spoilers sakes but might be the cause that he was so easily beaten)

Spoiler

Knouts were used in Russia for flogging as formal corporal punishment of criminals and political offenders. The victim was tied to a post or on a triangle of wood and stripped, receiving the specified number of strokes on the back. A sentence of 100 or 120 lashes was equivalent to a death sentence. Even twenty lashes could maim, and with the specially extended Great Knout, twenty blows could kill, with death sometimes being attributed to the breaking of the spine.

Above is a quote from a wiki page... A Knout can be a really horrible punishment.

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37 hours so far and I have really only gotten to the sorceress looking for the elf... There is so much content in the game. Before leaving he first area I chased down each and ever possible quest and site available. (to learn the game mechanics etc) That was a lot of work just for the first areas. I spent about that same time (about 40~48 hours) going through the first run through of Fallout 4 to finish the faction quests.

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Basically, Andrzej Sapkowski sold the Witcher video game rights to CDPR for a lump sum of $9,500 because he thought they would fail. He didn't have any faith in the company or the industry and now he's mad that the Witcher games are a financial success and CDPR is now worth about 2 Billion U.S. dollars. Since this isn't a news article I can say this; Andrzej Sapkowski is a cunt.